 Dear colleagues, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you're joining us from today. My name is Yana Aranda and I'm the director of the Engineering Global Development Team at ASME and also serve as the president of Engineering for Change. It is my privilege today to welcome you all to this side event of the seventh annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals. At today's event, we will dive into the topic of preparing the future engineering workforce to achieve the SDGs through multi-stakeholder engagement. Today's event was co-organized by our long-term partners at the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth with the support of an incredible group of collaborators. I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to the UNMGCY for co-designing the side event and collaborating with us over the years. Today's event will be documented by our colleagues at UNMGCY and key recommendations and actions will be integrated in the follow-up report MGCY sends to the STI forum co-chairs. We're also deeply grateful for the support of our founding organization, ASME, whose president is joining us today. We have assembled an incredible panel of change agents from our ecosystem of collaborators. I'd like to thank you all for your partnership and advocacy for the role of science, technology, engineering and innovation in creating a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable world for us all. This webinar will be archived on the E4C site and our YouTube channel for access later. Both of those URLs are listed on this slide. If you have any questions, comments and recommendations for future topics and speakers, do please contact the E4C team at webinars at engineeringforchange.org. And if you're following us on Twitter today, do join the conversation with our dedicated hashtag. Now, before we move on to our presenters, I'd like to tell you a bit about ASME and engineering for change. ASME is a nonprofit membership organization which was established in 1880 for enabling collaboration, knowledge sharing and skills development across all engineering disciplines. With more than 90,000 members in over 135 countries, ASME is a truly global organization. ASME is also standards development organization having delivered more than 566 standards governing everything from screw-thread dimensions to nuclear power plants. All of this is unified by a mission to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity. Dating back to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals over a decade ago, ASME recognized the importance of science, technology and innovation in sustainable development and the unique roles that engineers needed to play. At that time, ASME investigations found that, unfortunately, engineers were largely disconnected from global development efforts, limiting potential impact. And we responded with a portfolio of programs and platforms to address this gap. We welcomed the announcement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. The SDGs represent a unified framework by which the global communities address humanity's greatest challenges. And they are not exclusively for developing countries or underserved communities. Simultaneously technical and social in nature, the SDGs require high impact solutions, a technical talent pipeline prepared to engage infectively, as well as infrastructure and public leadership to drive implementation at scale. This consensus underpin the first STI forum held in 2016. The challenges we face today collectively cross borders and are well beyond the scope of any individual, company, industry, sector or government. And it's becoming increasingly obvious to both those within and outside of our profession that engineers are vital to achieving the SDGs. For significant progress, we need to build on the progress we've made and continue to drive systemic change, cross-sector engagement, regulation and government action. This requires that engineers and other technical professionals across all sectors and disciplines are trained at much faster rates and equipped with the platforms, networks and knowledge to be at the decision-making table. As an ecosystem enabler, we assemble forums such as today's event to connect the diverse sectors and actors to chart the course together and engineer a better future for us all. At ASME, we have been dedicated to addressing sustainable development issues for over a decade through our engineering global development team, which I am proud to lead. To meet the UN's 2030 Agenda deadline, the EGD team is fiercely focused on building the workforce of the future, ensuring improved engineering engagement and technological stewardship. We do this through an ecosystem of platforms and programs delivering knowledge, committing academic institutions, researchers, engineering associations, private sector, NGOs and the multilateral agencies around the world with a shared vision to unify around the SDGs and pursue concrete joint initiatives and expedite progress. We are steadfast in our belief that as SDG 17, partnership for the goals underscores, no one country, organization or individual can achieve these results alone. As an example, I want to highlight how we are treating future practitioners and social entrepreneurs focused on hardware-led social innovation. ASME's social innovation accelerator, iShow, matches social ventures across the globe with the design services, engineering expertise and financial support they need to successfully take physical products to market and achieve positive social and environmental impact. Since 2015, our regional events held annually in Kenya, India and the United States have enabled over 180 startups from more than 30 countries to solve quality of life challenges for underserved communities worldwide. Our experience with iShow has shown us the significant potential of social enterprise in improving the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable populations. It has also made us keenly aware of the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. To overcome these hurdles, the iShow accelerator delivers technical strategic guidance to social ventures based on four key pillars, customer and user knowledge, hardware validation, manufacturing optimization and implementation strategy. We match our finalists in cohort with our global network of engineers, designers, investors and entrepreneurs to ensure that the proposed solutions are technologically, environmentally, culturally and financially sustainable. Our global community of diverse experts works closely with the iShow team to understand the unique challenges of finalist and each region, share critical insights and select our cohorts. Right now, social entrepreneurs look to iShow for help getting their better prototypes to market but we recognize that they also needed help much earlier in the process, moving from the very early concept stage to building a working prototype, a place to explore, develop and improve the most promising ideas for social impact hardware even if those ideas are still largely untested or not fully formed. That is why we launched the idea lab in 2021 to identify promising ideas to move through a rigorous process and ensure that they're fully viable, manufacturable and will make a difference. In addition to this, we are also mobilizing a growing global community of change agents via our digital platform and community engineering for change, which you're all on today. ASME founded E4C over a decade ago with other leading associations and it is now our leading digital platform, knowledge organization and global community of more than a million engineers, designers, scientists, development practitioners and others who are leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges faced by vulnerable communities. E4C's perspective cuts across geographies and sectors including ICT, energy, water, sanitation, transport, health, habitat and agriculture, providing pathways to connect, learn, explore and freely access critical knowledge and networks to advance the social sector. E4C members access news and thought leaders, insights on research and hundreds of essential technologies in our solutions library, professional development resources and unique opportunities to contribute their skills to the social sector. The global mega trends of shifting demographics, digital connectivity and technological advancement are reflected on our members today. Most of them are from India, followed closely by the United States, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Philippines. They are young, approximately 70% of them are under the age of 35 and they are technically trained as engineers, scientists, architects and designers and a significant percentage of them are women. What this data tells us is that young, diverse, technically trained people particularly in emerging markets are seeking to apply their skills to improve quality of life for their communities and beyond. Now, as I mentioned, E4C is powered by ASME and that would not be possible without the visionary leadership and champions of individuals such as our current president-elect Karen Oland. I'm honored to introduce ASME's president-elect to you all today. She's the associate director for finance and operations at the Princeton University Art Museum where she provides strategic leadership, strengthening and sustaining the process for planning management. She has experience as a biomedical engineer in industry, academia and government, most recently as the research manager for HAL Medical Inc., which is an orthopedic implant manufacturer. She is a recipient of various ASME awards and a member of the Engineering Honor Society, Talbedev High and the American Society of Engineering Education, orthopedic research society and American Society of Biomechanics. Karen received a bachelor's degree in engineering and biology from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and as a master's degree in anatomy from the University of Chicago. We are very honored to welcome Karen to the stage. Karen, the floor is yours. Thank you, Yama. And hello, everyone. As president-elect of ASME, it is my privilege to welcome you to this important discussion on preparing the future engineering workforce to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals. I am so proud to lead an organization with such a prominent footprint in the sustainability space. I'm sure I don't need to tell all of you how critical and imperative this is, not only for the future of our engineering community, but for human beings everywhere, especially those in underserved regions of the world. Addressing the UN SDGs is one of the most visible ways that ASME fulfills its mission to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity. And given the enormity of the technical challenges we face, humanity needs qualified multi-disciplinary engineers now more than ever before. Within ASME, there are two key drivers for this work. One is AISHO, which Yana referred to, our Signature Hardware Accelerator Competition, which kicks off next week on May 10th with the first of our three regional events, AISHO India. I invite all of you to log in for this exciting event. The second main driver of our sustainability work is our Engineering for Change Organization, E4C, which is funded by the ASME Foundation and the Campaign for Next Generation Engineers. We'll be hearing more about this amazing work in just a few minutes. The goal of ASME's philanthropic programs, including AISHO and E4C, is to empower the next generation engineers. And there are two main ways we accomplish this. By increasing access to the engineering profession for those who are represented in it, and by supporting engineers to build a more sustainable future. As you will hear, E4C helps us meet both these challenges. More than half our prestigious E4C fellowships are awarded to women engineers. So in that sense, we are directly addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the engineering profession. And our million member E4C digital community is a powerful knowledge and networking resource for engineers who work to solve the UN SDGs. So you can see why I'm such a big believer in ASME's global development work and in all that ASME is doing to build a workforce that will lead the world towards a more sustainable future. Thank you all for being here today and for your commitment to this cause. I can think of no better use for an engineer's talents than contributing to a cleaner, healthier, more productive, and more sustainable world. Enjoy the webinar. Thank you so much for that welcome, Karen, and for your commitment to this work. To introduce myself, I'm Jonathan Kemp and I'll be one of your moderators for today's discussion. I'm a technology focal point for the MGCY Youth Science Policy Interface Platform and program associate with Engineering for Change and with the Engineering Global Development Department at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. My background is being one of the early career engineers who's been prepared personally by one of the programs we're discussing today, having been part of the Engineering for Change Fellowship alongside the work that I was doing at the time as a technical manager for a community development organization in Southern Malawi. I'd now like to introduce and hand over to my colleague and co-moderator, Carolina Rojas, who will also speak on behalf of the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth Science Policy Interface Platform. Welcome, Carolina. Thank you, Jonathan, for the introduction. It is an honor to be here, representing two organizations that I'm passionate about. And so, four years ago, I got engaged with the MGCY through E4C in their efforts to involve E4C fellows with the UN system. And ever since, I'm passionate about the role engineers can play in the science policy space. So, this year, I have the pleasure to be, once again, interfacing between both organizations through this side event. As Jonathan, I am also a technology focal point for the MGCY and I am currently program associate at E4C. The ESPI platform, it's excited to be co-organizing this event with Engineering for Change and having this dialogue today with other organizations supporting early career engineers to pursue meaningful and impactful work in sustainable development. I want to give our audience a bit of a background about the MGCY and ESPI platform. The major group for children and youth or MGCY is one of the recognized stakeholder groups that engages young people aged 30 and under in certain UN processes related to sustainable development. As a youth-run organization, we have organized youth participation at the UN Multistakeholder Forum on Science, Technology, and Innovation since its inception. And we are excited to continue to do so this year. Currently, I specifically contribute to the MGCY as a technology focal point for the Science Policy Interface Platform, or ESPI, which is a global network of young people working at the intersection of science, technology policy and diplomacy within the UN system. The ESPI platform was created in 2016 as a cross-cutting platform of the MGCY that focuses on stakeholder participation, capacity building, lower generation and dissemination, and youth action in science policy spaces. We would like to recognize that this event is happening at the UN STI Forum. We want to acknowledge the role of engineers and architects as well as scientists and innovators in achieving the 17 sustainable development goals. The relationship between science, engineering, and policy has become an increasingly important component of sustainable development within the United Nations system. It provides a foundation for evidence in foreign policies, facilitates the use of science as an enabler in policy implementation and review, and provides a unique scientific lens into monitoring impact. The United Nations Global Sustainable Development Report, written by an independent group of scientists, clearly states that science does not exist in isolation to society. We as scientists and engineers have also the responsibility to contribute our insights to pressing issues and political deliberations about the future we want and need for people and planet. We also need to recognize that although you young scientists worldwide are mobilizing solutions for sustainable development challenges, through networks as DSPAD platform and others, many young engineers are still entering the workforce without support or knowledge of how to apply their skills towards sustainable development. And so we feel it is vitally important to convene spaces and discussions that foster cooperation between Amplify the work of organizations that are taking steps to prepare young engineers to engage with and address the sustainable development goals. Today, we are bringing together different actors who are enabling the workforce development of young engineers and scientists needed to achieve the sustainable development goals and 2030 agenda. From the MGCY and DSPAD platform team, we want to thank you for joining us today. I now hand it back to Jonathan for some housekeeping items and start our panel discussion. Jonathan, you might be muted. Thank you so much. I apologize for that. Thank you so much for those words, Carolina. We want to start now with a few important housekeeping items before we get into the panel discussion. Let's take a moment to practice using Zoom in the Zoom chat window. You can find that at the bottom of the Zoom window. So please click to open that and then type where you're joining us from. If you're joining us through the UNSTI forums, Hoover platform, you will see two chat windows, one on the right-hand side for Hoover and another from Zoom. But we prefer if you use the Zoom platform just so that we can get everyone speaking together. I'm seeing a number of different people. Now we've got visitors from Peru, people joining us from various cities in the US, states like New York, Oregon, places like Egypt, Canada. I'm seeing Ecuador, more cities in the US, Rwanda, Madrid and Spain, Ghana. Thank you so much for joining us from this wide range of different places. It's wonderful to have such diversity of people here today. I'm personally joining from Lantau and Malawi. Thank you so much for doing that. Now, as we get into the panel discussion, if you have any questions for the speakers, please use the Q&A window. You can find that just next to the chat window at the bottom of the Zoom. And if you have any technical challenges, please reach out by Zoom chat to James Creel, who's the administrator of this team. Our panel will begin with our panelists sharing about their background and the work their organizations are doing to prepare the future engineering workforce to achieve the SDGs. So I'd now like to introduce our first panelist, Frita Malour, head of the Emerging Technologies Division at the International Telecommunications Union, specialized United Nations Agency for Information and Communication Technologies. Welcome, Frita. Thanks, Jonathan. Can you see me and hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you, Frita. Perfect. So thank you, MGCY and ASME Engineering for Change for inviting me to this very important conversation. My name is Frita Malour and I'm the head of the Emerging Technologies Division at the ITU. The ITU is the specialized UN agency for Information and Communication Technologies. You know, it's for those who may not have heard of the ITU. It's the oldest UN agency. So we are 157-year-old. You know, our mission is bringing meaningful connectivity to the world, which includes capacity building to bridge the digital divide, tech policy, tech standards, spectrum management, areas such as AI, cybersecurity, quantum, fintech, many, many different areas that we work in. And as you can see from the bio on the screen, you know, I'm one of those who started out as an engineer, working more than 10 years purely as an engineer. And then I realized I was interested in the bigger picture. And I guess that moment of epiphany has struck many of you who are participating here. So I wanted to learn, you know, and do more about the impact on the impact of these technologies, you know, that they were having in general positive and negative impact. So I decided to do something about it. And I got a second degree in engineering and public policy. The University of Maryland College Park had this master's program in this area. So, you know, I joined that. That led to the ITU as this is the main UN body that works at the intersection of technology and public policy. And of course, Geneva is a very cool place to live. So having the exposure that I've had here, you know, I don't regret this for a second, my decision to move from a purely engineering role to my current role. So here, you know, I would like to talk about one initiative, you know, that ITU has going here. And because it's on AI and this was my expertise in a previous life. So, and also this is the major UN platform with 140 agencies as partners. It offers several opportunities for young engineers from all areas of expertise to contribute. So here's the presentation. Let me jump to that. All right. So AI for good. Now, it's a leading UN platform for UN action on AI. It's been organized by the ITU since 2017. It's co-convene by the Swiss government with more than 40 agencies as partners. So what is the AI for good? You know, for us at the UN, AI has the potential to positively impact all 17 SDGs. And we're seeing many examples, you know. We also recognize that there are many challenges in the application of AI which requires putting in place guardrails, be it ethical, human rights related, fast and security, protection of worker rights, many, many different areas. So, you know, simply put the goal of AI for good is to identify practical applications of AI to advance the UN SDGs and to scale these solutions for global impact, you know, and doing all this in line with UN core principles. Of course, it's been said many times and I think you will hear this message again. We have less than 10 years to achieve the SDGs and we are lagging behind in many, many areas. So we need to leverage all the technology and all the expertise we have out there. Next slide. So as you can see here, you know, practically the entire UN system is part of this effort. So for young engineers, you know, out there and the engineering associations, you can rest assured that, you know, for your field of work, your branch of engineering, the telecommunications, civil, nuclear, mechanical, agriculture, you know, UN agency whose work is directly relevant to your area is very active in using AI applications and its efforts. Next. So we have a whole range of products and activities. I only have three or four minutes in total. So this is just a snapshot. You know, in practically every group, we welcome expertise from young engineering professionals. Innovation factory, for example, with showcases, startups working in this intersection of AI applications and the impact on the SDGs, challenges such as the machine learning and 5G challenge, you know, which is targeted towards young researchers in the field, the webinars where you can learn more about what's happening, the latest breakthroughs, you know, the coolest applications. Also talk about your work in many, many different areas and all of this is open to all stakeholders, you know, governments, private sector, technical community, universities, research institutions, civil society, and it's open to all. So just like ASME, IT also develops technical standards with the UN agency, which does that, I think. And so we have many technical groups, you know, looking at topics such as AI and health, AI for autonomous driving, AI and natural disaster management, machine learning and 5G, of course, AI and internet of things for digital agriculture. You know, all these are in collaboration with different agencies, other sister agencies. And these are all pre-standardization groups, you know, so mainly run by academics, young researchers to again invite you to actively engage. And I can tell you how you can do that at the end. Another one to highlight, you know, a resource that IT publishes annually of all the AI projects you have going on in different UN agencies and specifically which SDGs they correspond to. So here you have a reference guide for the projects you're interested in, you know, and the contact person that you could reach out to in these agencies. And there are more than 220 projects highlighted. So this is something that you can rely on. Last slide. Okay, this is how you can immediately engage. We have launched a community platform for you to directly engage and contribute. More than 5,000 people are on it. Now we launched it in Feb of this year. More than 5,000 people are on it, including experts, you know, practitioners, young professionals, UN agencies. So if you're interested, you can directly register at AFofgood.itu.in or you could reach out to me and I'll be happy to help put you in touch with the IT. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Prutam. It's fantastic to hear about this work that IT is doing and we do think that it'll be great for people to engage there. I forget if they see alignment with their passions. Now our next panelist is Emma Stein. She's bringing insights around the academic engagement in this space. Welcome, Emma. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma. I'm pursuing a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder and researching student experiences before, during and after attending a graduate program in development engineering. I focus on how these experience influence career goals and outcome expectations. I'm interested in how these goal line goals align with social justice movements, including if and how students and practitioners are addressing global inequality and the SDGs and career pathways, especially now when activists are calling for the development sector to implement decolonized and anti-racist structures. So currently I'm interviewing about 50 students from seven different graduate development engineering programs in the US every semester. So these students are in different stages within their graduate programs. Some are starting them. Some are about to graduate. I'm gonna see them go into their careers. And yeah, and then I'm gonna start interviewing practitioners soon too to see those practitioners career goals as well. So then on the next slide, I'm hoping to talk about some of the really common structures that I see in these graduate programs and then some of the best practices that the students I'm interviewing really appreciate or are hoping that their program starts to do. So a lot of these graduate programs use T-shaped in-class learning. On the left, you can see from UC Berkeley, their graduate development program, they have this T-shaped structure where maybe a few classes go over a breadth of ideas within sustainable development. So as you can see for Berkeley, they're focusing on ethics and reflection, data analysis, and a whole bunch of topics. And then after those classes, you can choose a concentration. And for Berkeley, it'd be like sustainable design, healthcare, AI, energy, water environment, or self-designed. My school at Boulder, we have an intro class this is sustainable community development where we go over what's happening in the field right now, the SDGs, past failures, hopes, successes. And then we have a lot of classes that will dive more deeply into specific topics. So we'll have global health, data or a community appraisal, development economics, and classes like that. So within here, I see best practices when programs align the breadth classes or intro to sustainable development classes to social justice and how to effectively work on SDGs. This is really our chance to talk about the history of global development, why different communities and countries are at different points in the SDGs, why maybe past development models aren't working super well or when they are working well. What are the root causes for all this inequality? That is a good time to talk about that. Other best practices are when we create spaces that are valuable to students from all backgrounds and knowledge bases. Morning work is a little limited, well very limited, because we're really focusing on the US. However, some of the trends we see in the US can be really applicable to other countries. We have found that scholars have shown us that students from low and middle income countries and students of color are really, really valuable in the spaces, they bring the navigational, social resistance and linguistic skills that are very helpful to development strategy. However, we wanna make sure not to tokenize those students for their knowledge and make spaces where students from different privileges and spaces and experiences with infrastructure inequality can co-create knowledge. So that's really important. And then finally we wanna find ways to recruit and admit students without relying on gate kept experiences. Something about this T-shaped structure is that it's very helpful if we bring in a lot of students that have STEM backgrounds and engineering backgrounds, because then we don't need to focus on those engineering foundations and we can really focus on sustainable development, what is happening at the moment. However, in the US and maybe in other countries, how students get into engineering programs can be really defined on privileges. And if we only use students that come from an engineering undergraduate degree, we might be leaving out a lot of other students who would be very, very valuable in this field. So if we can find ways for students to circumnavigate an engineering undergraduate degree or get into these graduate programs without a very similar background, it's also very valuable. And then on my next slide, one other thing that really unites these programs is that these sustainable development graduate programs often have a practicum or internship experiential learning opportunity. So my program at the Morton's and Center, we have a practicum that happens over the summer in between your first and second year in graduate school. And here's a little image that shows where all these students are going and what different sectors they're working on. And a lot of programs have something like this. So within this idea, a best practice that we have seen is to have a very diverse array of internship opportunities, including topic, location and tasks. In the past, maybe sometimes leadership has been more specific on what locations you could go to, where people need sustainable development, what topics are engineering, but as decolonizing development and as the sector just changes, what a future role is for different types of students is really changing. And what we consider engineering is changing where you should be working is changing. So being very open to what students want to work on is really valuable, while also giving advice on how to get a good career. And then we also want to be creative and providing learning experiences that bear away from neocolonialism. Sometimes we have projects where students have a lot of power over the project or control over the money that will be affecting a project when community members really have a lot more knowledge on what needs to get done. So we want to have opportunities for students that bear away from neocolonialism. And then finally, being thoughtful about short-term travel and who is benefiting and potentially being harmed by a practical experience. This was especially easy to see during COVID, students that maybe really wanted to travel realized that, oh, I can help out an institution, but without traveling, I can make connections with different community members and people from around the world without traveling. And my presence somewhere might actually be harmful because of COVID. So it made it really clear. So yeah, those are some best practices that I've seen in my research. Thank you so much Emma, that's fascinating to hear. I'd now like to give the floor to our two panelists with the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, Polkit Kanotra and Mikaela Chan. Welcome Polkit Mikaela. Hi everyone, my name is Polkit Kanotra. I'm a licensed civil engineer based out of New York City. Currently, I work at Parsons Corporations in the airport design sector. I have experience in water resource management. I am an early career young engineer. Outside of my career, I've a volunteer experience with engineers about borders along with I'm on a working group for the Commonwealth Youth for Sustainable Urbanization Steering Committee and also the WFBO Global Young Engineers working group on SDG 13 along with Mikaela. If she wants to go next. Sure, hi, can we go on to the next slide? So yeah, my name is Mikaela. I'm also part of the WFBO working group with Polkit and delighted to have this opportunity to present to you. I'm a civil engineer at Arcade, just working in the water sector. I'm also an early careers professional. I graduated in 2019 and I'm currently representing the UK on the Y20 Youth Summit in Indonesia on Sustainable and Livable Planet. So yeah, trying to bring in that policy experience and creating those pathways. So yeah, if we could go on to the next slide, I guess we'll start telling you a bit about our working group. So yeah, we're a group of international young engineers who are looking to make a huge difference in the world and we came together through various connections but with one goal in mind, namely how to create the most impact on SDG 13 climate action. And so we've seen that climate action has and climate change has had a huge impact on civilization and we're finding that all the studies and findings are pointing to a really bleak future, especially for younger and future generations. So we're committed to being a voice for young engineers around the world because young engineers do have a lot to say about how to tackle climate change. And we're also going to be the most impacted by current climate action policies. So I'll hand over to Paul Kitt to talk a bit about what we've done so far. Thanks, Paquela. So what we have done so far is starting last year, we actually started off the year with an engagement for young engineering organizations around the world using WFU as a member of site. If you will, we reached out to engineering organizations around the world and try to create a space for them to kind of communicate with each other and pass on knowledge that might be relevant to each other's countries. For example, that there's one region that is combating climate change and other regions policies or their engineering style might help the other side. So we try to create a communication network for organizations. Mainly our biggest accomplishment last year was actually presenting at COP26, a joint statement of international youth organizations with partnership from MGCY, the UN Secretary General's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, YANGO, UNFCCCC, Global Youth Network, and the UN Youth for Climate. We presented a climate declaration where we have presented some policy recommendations for public policy makers to kind of enact in their public policies. Some of the policy areas that we touched on were mitigation, adaptation and resiliency, inclusive action and capacity buildings. So we had a total of 12 policy recommendations that we've made. Three of them were actually fully adopted in the Glasgow Climate Pact. Those were ensuring a clear roadmap for every sector to implement NDCs or nationally determined contributions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We also had recommendations for greenhouse gas and methane emissions mitigation along with the inclusion of youth capacity development theme in the Global Climate Fund Green Jobs Initiative. So those three were actually adopted in the Glasgow Climate Act. Seven of our policy recommendations were officially acknowledged and recognized. And two of them were identified to be further discussed in subsequent COPs. So one this year at COP27 and then the future ones. Some of the other ones policies that we had recommended were stopping and prohibiting exploration and development of new fossil fuel projects, ensuring meaningful and inclusive participation of local communities in the creation of national adaptation plans. Because a lot of times we've seen that governments tend to create public policy without input from local communities which are gonna be mostly impacted by them. So it's very important to include them. Also we wanted to support the creation of new jobs and development of skills, especially for younger engineers which kind of calls into capacity building. We wanted to make sure that the youth were involved in creation of these new green jobs. As Michaela mentioned, because the youth are gonna be the ones who are gonna be mostly impacted by climate change. If you can please go to the next slide. I just wanted to highlight some of the signatories that we had. We were able to get endorsements from quite a few organizations including Young Go, Science and Policy Interface, Engineer Dot Borders, International and Australia, Engineering for Change. Also someone to note was Charles Hendry who was the former minister for business energy and clean growth in the UK, Resilience Shift and World Young Scientist Summit. So all of these people helped push our voice out to the world. As you can see in the photos, that's kind of our panel from our committee members who presented our declaration and we actually had on the ground committee members passing out our declaration to different policy makers. One of the photos is one of our committee members, Carol who's giving our declaration to Mr. Nigel Topping personally. He's a UK's high level climate action champion who was appointed by the prime minister. So our ragtag group of people got together and were able to make quite an impact. So it's been quite an amazing year and I'll pass it on to Michaela to talk about what we're gonna do next. Yeah, so I think I have probably about a minute left. So I'll just briefly take you through our strategic plan for the year. As you can see, it's built into four themes, the first being climate policy recommendations. So in this area, we're looking at advocating for sub areas, so climate finance, clean energy capacity building and loss and damage with the aim to attend COP 27 later in the year and encouraging UN parties to adopt our policy recommendations again this year and will publish the climate action report and initiate the 2023 climate advocacy aims by the beginning of next year. The second area is business environment climate policy. So through this, we aim to develop a strategy and really set up industry-wide dialogue with business leaders, emerging professionals and key organizations in the sector to garner commitments and share best practices. And we also hope to take this to engage with UN parties. The third one is capacity building for youths and young professionals. So we are looking to get engaged with a number of events across the year starting, well, with this one I guess and going all the way up to COP and hoping to engage with different COP simulations to really help to bring young people into policy-making and sustainability space. The final one is strategic engagement. So we've identified a number of strategic partnerships which includes the UN climate high-level champions as Paul Kent mentioned, we engaged with them last year but also other worthier partners. So institutions across the world and other UN groups like the UN Secretary-General's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change and yeah, MGCY. So yes, I think that's it for our presentation and thank you and look forward to answering your questions later. Thank you so much, Makayla and Paul Kent. I'd now like to pass on to our next panelist, Brayton Kaurama, Global Director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in New York City. Welcome Brayton. Thanks Jonathan, I'm very excited to be here today and congratulations to everybody that has gone already and shared their very innovative and unique work. My name is Brayton Kaurama, as I've been introduced. I am Zambian but currently leading the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network youth in New York City. I lead a global network of over 4,400 young entrepreneurs, scientists, artists and innovators that are working to localize the sustainable development goals. I did my Masters of Columbia University specifically focusing on the Masters of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy but I've also worked across startups having co-founded a startup in the past using technology to centralize mobility and transportation in Zambia. And I'm gonna speak about what we do at the SDSM youth, what are some of our strategic priorities and how are we contributing to innovation in the context of the sustainable development goals. I'd like to introduce you to the Youth Solutions Program which is one of the three global programs run by SDSM youth. So founded in 2015, SDSM youth, which is presided by Professor Jeff Sacks, works across youth entrepreneurship, education for sustainable development, as well as urban sustainability. But why do we focus on these three key elements? We believe that by 2030, almost 50% of the global population is going to be urban cities. So how do we begin to innovate around how we can create more livable and sustainable urban cities? So we have a year-long fellowship program that brings 100 young people from over 100 countries that come to design and divide solutions for sustainable cities from mobility to energy generation. The Youth Solutions Program specifically looks at bringing together young social entrepreneurs from around the world and taking them through innovation processes from ideation all the way to launching their ideas and innovation. Next slide. So the Youth Solutions Program, as I stated, is one of our three global flagship programs, but it focuses mainly on promoting innovative youth-led projects that are tackling the world's toughest challenges around the STDs. So the program was launched in 2016, and so far it has worked to support and accelerate 200-plus youth innovations across 170 past countries. So these young people are running startups and innovative ideas and projects across the 17 sustainable development goals. And what the program really does is to help them invade sustainability at the core of their business models. So we've identified through our global network that young social entrepreneurs are facing a plethora of challenges from barriers and lack of opportunities to learn innovation or social entrepreneurship, to a lack of access to mentoring opportunities and business development services. We've also seen that so many young people, especially those in emerging markets have got limited access to networks and lack of visibility to opportunities. As I said, we've also seen a lack of shared narratives and SDG alignments, with a lack of access to opportunities for them to learn new skills. We've also seen challenges implementing, scaling and funding innovations and solutions. So through the youth solutions programs, we've designed a program that addresses all these key challenges, that's right. So our approach in the Youth Solutions Fellowship focuses on providing innovation, training and mentorship, where we have partnered with a number of different organizations, including their World Bank programs, Columbia University, where we provide mentoring opportunities for young innovators and entrepreneurs that are driving social enterprise innovations. And we put them into a network of experts for them to gain visibility, have access to funding opportunities. But most importantly, we want to help young innovators align whatever they are working on to the SDG goals. So we have experts that take them through a series of trainings for 12 months before they eventually pitch their ideas and have access to opportunities for them. So how does the program work? So we begin by scouting and sourcing talent, where we have a call for applications for young people from around the world. And then we get into knowledge building, where the selected hundred innovators go through an incubator program. So the incubator program that we run focuses on building their foundational skillsets. For those young people who are interested in social entrepreneurship, we are building a program that builds their social entrepreneurship skills. Then we go into mentorship and building a community, because we believe that more than anything, having somebody that can guide you and hold your hand as a budding entrepreneur is just as important as receiving opportunities for financing. So we give them opportunities to have access to mentors. These are seasoned SDG experts to seasoned investors. And then we create opportunities for them to pitch their ideas and opportunities. So we get into a pitch context where they pitch their ideas. And this happens at the end of each year. They'll be pitching their solutions to our panel of experts. Then we provide pathways. So the innovators don't just go through a fellowship, but they stay in the network and we connect them with accelerators, impact investors and other opportunities. And just recently, we launched our SEED Awards in partnership with Monash University, as well as the Queens Commonwealth Trust, where we're gonna be providing more SEED grants to some of these young people that are proving to have innovative ideas. And I need a sizable amount of investment for them to scale what they are doing. But from my personal experience, on top of what we are doing at the UNSTS in youth, I've come to realize that as somebody that wants to do an environmental science program that combines policy and innovation, what is becoming more important more than anything at the moment is to empower young people to amount to disciplinary skillset. Because when you look at sustainability careers, and somebody that studies sustainability, all the industries are now looking at ways through which they can reduce costs, increase profits, but at the same time be sustainable. So we're encouraging young people in the STS in youth network across 127 countries to think about ways through which the respective of their careers prioritize sustainability in whatever career paths they choose and to help them by connecting them to the right people and the right industries for them to create impacts in their own unique ways. And lastly, every year, we organize what we call the Particle Youth Symposium, where we bring leaders in business and government. And this past year in December, we brought Maya Mothly, the prime minister of Barbados, we brought Professor Jeffrey Sacks, we brought Nubola laureates, Mohamon Ngunas, and over a thousand young people to engage for two days in intergenerational conversations about innovation, social enterprise in the SDG goals and create alliances for partnerships. This year, we are focusing primarily on ways of creating partnerships and for those that would be interested in working together, we'll be very simple ways through which we can collaborate and partner on a number of our strategic initiatives that we're doing. Thank you so much, Brayton. And now our final panelist, last but not least, by no means least, is my colleague, Erin Pfeiffer, research manager, engineering for change. Welcome, Erin. Thanks, Jonathan. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. As Jonathan said, my name's Erin Pfeiffer and I'm research manager with engineering for change where I support our fellowship program. I first became involved with E4C as a volunteer and then as an expert fellow in the 2020 and 2021 cohorts. My background is in mechanical engineering and renewable and clean energy and I'm currently based in Oregon. Next slide. As Ianna spoke to earlier, E4C's mission is to prepare, educate and activate the international engineering workforce to improve the quality of life of underserved communities around the world. We do this by providing programs, resources and platforms that accelerate the development of impactful solutions and ensure public health and safety around the globe. The program that I will be focusing on specifically today is the E4C fellowship program. Next slide. At E4C, we have a unique model for mobilizing human infrastructure. Our impact projects framework which I will speak more to on the next slides enables our community to contribute their expertise in service of the SDGs. To achieve the objectives determined together with our partners, we assemble and cultivate diverse talent from around the globe. We lean on the insights and the strategic guidance of our global network of more than 1,000 multidisciplinary experts and integrate in our E4C fellows whom we expose to these urgent issues and train to execute the mix of scholarly work, private sector market research and human-centered design required to propel the sector forward. This human infrastructure is critical for realizing the SDGs and more. Next slide. To unpack this in a little bit more detail, E4C's impact projects are part of an annual program that brings together our community with social impact organizations worldwide to advance sustainability objectives. Projects are co-designed with diverse organizations ranging from academic institutions, nonprofits, social enterprises, private sector and multilateral agencies. We have three work streams for impact projects which you see here, including impact research, design for good and advancing workflows. Our impact research projects investigate critical research questions at the intersection of engineering, sustainability and global development. One example of this is a project sponsored by Habitat for Humanity where fellows identified and analyzed sustainable housing solutions and innovations that would enable circular economies and low-income communities, particularly in Mexico and Kenya. Our design for good projects assess, assist organizations with product design, development, implementation. Last year we worked with the nonprofit Bridges to Prosperity on a project at the intersection of transport, infrastructure and data analytics. The project leveraged existing satellite imagery of completed bridges to prosperity trail bridges in Rwanda and Uganda to determine changes in the width of walking paths and roads within a specified distance before and after bridge construction. And then lastly, our advancing workflows projects work to improve system workflow processes to ensure that partners can achieve their impact goals more efficiently. Last year we worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to support the implementation of an integrated settlement spatial planning framework focused on the delivery of settlement planning tools and templates as a key component for implementing the framework. These examples are just a few of more than 70 projects to date. Next slide. And it is my pleasure to officially welcome the 50 plus incredible fellows that make up the 2022 cohort this year. This is officially their first week. Typically we would be in New York City attending the STI forum, but today they're joining us at the side event from around the world to the E4C fellows who are on the call right now. I encourage you to type in a brief introduction into the chat now. The 2022 fellows will join our growing network of multidisciplinary global change agents representing 24 nationalities and a gender balance that is still, unfortunately, aspirational in most engineering classes in professional settings today. These incredible individuals represent the science, tech and innovation ecosystem and how a digital platform can be leveraged to train a global workforce necessary to achieve the SDGs and beyond. Next slide. So in conclusion, this approach that we use at E4C allows us to simultaneously train exceptional rising professionals worldwide, provide a platform for interdisciplinary cooperation and connect a community of thought leaders and peers from every continent. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Erin. And thank you to all of our panelists. It's wonderful to hear about all the work that each of you are doing in your respective organizations. We'll now move on to the moderated panel reception of the discussion. And given the time, please do put any questions that you have for the panelists into the Q&A. And I might ask the panelists, please, if you can respond by typing to those, that would be great as we proceed through the moderated discussion just to ensure we get through as many questions as possible. So let's have you all here today. I'd like to begin with a question to Emma and to Paul Kitt. Please can you speak to the challenges that you see for early career engineers to receive the SDG to receive SDG and social impact focused training in the academic and private sector spaces? So maybe Emma, you can start for us. Hi. So something I've been seeing across a lot of students is that they really desire some role models that are doing meaningful work, including work that addresses the root problems for why outcomes, including the SDG is very among communities and countries. So some of the classic role models and career tracks and large NGOs and government organizations or religious groups and other development organizations are now being identified as potentially perpetuating colonial or ineffective practices. And so it's making them struggle on what career track should I go down or what training should I partake in? So for example, students are reading books like The Divide on the historical reasons for global inequality wealth, education, clean water and other SDGs and the effect of debt on this inequality. And then they desire some role models of individuals and institutions addressing these deeply rooted issues which there are some out there but they would love more access to them. And then I did talk about this a little bit but I think students really desire creativity and how they're being taught about and practice working on these issues in the US or undergraduate and graduate opportunities for getting involved in these problems are often service learning activities such as engineers outboarders, which is great, I did it. Where students work on a project that aids in the SDGs and then rely on the partner communities to maintain that project. However, there's some outdated aspects to this model which is very common among lots of organizations. For instance, community-based maintenance as opposed to professional maintenance may be less effective and sometimes these models rely on unpaid labor of partner communities and may not have enough oversight of local engineers. So just more creativity. So in summary, students want to address inequalities are concerned with perpetuating colonial models or ineffective practices and the desire experiences and role models that show how they can contribute to SDGs in meaningful ways. There's my shield. Thank you, I'm a Phuket. Yeah, hi everyone. Again, I think as an early career engineer the biggest thing that I've noticed is as far as training is concerned for social impacts focus study is there's a lot of training that is very much job function-specific but a lot of training that I've seen in my work, my employment, every job I worked at is that they lack interest exploration. As an engineer who worked in water resources I've had various levels of positions within different companies but I was never able to kind of explore what I was interested in. I personally am interested in sustainable development but I couldn't, I didn't feel comfortable nor did I feel like I had a space to kind of talk to my superior, to talk to my bosses, talk to HR that, hey, I'm interested in sustainable development and I would like to explore more training. Most trainings that were provided to me were very much top level down as this is what my job function is and these are the trainings that one must partake in. So I think that there's a big hole that needs to be filled there that if employees are given space and confidence to come out and speak up and say, hey, I'm interested in learning about sustainable engineering or I'm interested in learning about water management or climate adaptation or resiliency, is there any training that I can partake in? I think that's a very important piece of the puzzle that is still kind of missing in a lot of private sector spaces. And honestly, I work in public space sector as well and it's similar. There's not a lot of impetus or a lot of incentive for employers to ask their employees, hey, why are you interested in it and how can we train you and I think that's the biggest thing. Thank you, Brookhead. As we continue to consider the gaps and barriers that are causing the limiting young professionals to have careers in sustainable development, I'd like to address a question to Erin and to Brighton. Both of your organizations engage with young engineers, architects and scientists globally through fellowship programs, helping them to advance the SDGs. So first, Erin, from your experience with the Engineering for Change Fellowship Program, can you speak to what challenges the early career technical professionals are facing to form a career in sustainable development? Thanks, Jonathan. So from my experience with the Eversy Fellowship Program, I believe some of the challenges that early career technical professionals face around opportunities are around opportunities navigating career pathways and a lack of formalized training. And I can elaborate on each of those points in a little bit more detail. So applicants for the fellowship have expressed a lack of opportunities to collaborate on projects internationally as well as a lack of opportunities to work on projects that have a real intangible impact in comparison to say like traditional school projects or internships where there may be a lack of this connection to social and sustainable impact. And I think that that's kind of why it draws a lot of interested applicants to our fellowship program in the first place. Additionally, it can be pretty difficult to navigate career pathways in this space as some of the panelists have spoken to you. Historically doing Engineering for Global Development work has required volunteer work, which is a tremendous barrier for those who don't have the resources to go without pay, for example. And one way we try to address this with our fellowship program is providing statements and also having the opportunity to be part-times that they can continue to work within other jobs if necessary. Additionally, we try to provide ample networking opportunities through the projects, through our growing E-for-C alumni network and then also by engaging with our expert network around the globe. So for example, if someone wanted to work for the UN one day, applicants see that this fellowship could be a great opportunity to further make those connections to make that happen. And then lastly, I mentioned a lack of formalized training on Engineering for Global Development and the skills needed to be successful for that. So including things like just understanding the sector as a whole, design processes, considerations for manufacturing, distribution and implementation, business models around social innovation and several more, which are things that we do try to address in our fellowship and our learning curriculum. Thanks. Thanks, Owen. And Brighton, from your experience with the Local Pathways Fellowship Program, can you speak to what challenges young innovators are facing to develop impactful solutions that address the issues? I think, thanks Jonathan. So we continue to observe very consistently some of the learnings that are coming out of these fellowship programs we run with the Local Pathways Fellowship, we bring urban architects, designers and innovators, policy analysts to come together and form teams that can address these problems from across disciplinary stands. Because we keep realizing that if we want to solve any of the challenges around sustainability, we don't just need lawyers, a lot of engineers, a lot of we need like a multidisciplinary skillset that can contribute to designing all these solutions. So through our Local Fellowship Pathways, we are addressing that problem by creating teams of young people that have got diverse skillsets. But that's one thing that we've also learned. Young people that are in our fellowships would share about how in their previous experience they found themselves to be in a style of where because they were focusing on this particular career and they would do it indefinitely. But they've started realizing and learning that things are evolving. You might not just focus on one specific career path indefinitely. You might think about ways of diversifying your skillsets and collaborating with others to resolve complex challenges that equally require collaboration. So collaboration is one thing that we've observed and we are bridging that by creating a platform for young people to connect. The other issue, especially for young people in the global south, I come from Zambia, I come from an African country and I see that in the next, by 2050 for example, Africa is going to be a continent with 1 billion people. But if you look at access to opportunities by most young innovators there, young engineers who are creating solutions for sustainable development, access to say financing, it's totally different from other young people that are in the global north. I live in New York so I can speak confidently to some of these issues that I've observed. So we're creating pathways of linking them to opportunities to accessible amounts of investments. We recently launched our seed awards where we are creating partnerships with other organizations and identifying some of the most tangible and scalable solutions around mobility, reforestation and we're giving them opportunities to receive a set of amounts of funding. So the financing gap that exists in SDGs is quite huge and I think it's good to start not treating young careers to be uniform globally. There is no, they're not homogeneous at all. So we try to look at them as unique cases depending on where they're from and which part of the world they're from. Thank you, Biden, that's very insightful. Now we want to consider particularly about the current progress that we're achieving and the training opportunities that are taking place at the moment. So preterm, two of this year's STI forum topics discussion are aligned to the SDG4 on quality education and five on gender equality. One of today's thematic sessions focused on digital public goods and highlighted the importance of digital connectivity and literacy for development and achieving the SDGs. Given the current efforts from ITU are aligned to these topics, can you share more about the ways ITU is bridging the digital divide globally and building capacity of our early career engineers and young people broadly? Sure, thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for the question. It's a fairly broad question so I'll give in the time constraint I have. Now I'll focus my response on one of the major divides, the digital gender divide. Erin also brought it up in her intervention. And here, despite some encouraging progress the digital gender divide still remains the, it's prevalent in a great many countries around the world. And sadly, the connectivity divide is widest in the world's LDCs, the least developed countries where a large majority of women remain totally offline. And it's not just an access divide. It's also a representational divide within the tech sector, no, the tech engineering sector. And ITU has been focusing in this area for more than a decade. For example, we have the equals global partnership that aims to help fulfill SDG-5. It's in partnership with UN Women, the International Trade Center, which is another UN agency in Geneva here, GSMA, which is the Telecom Industry Association and UN University. There are colleagues, and today we have more than 100 partners across the world. And what do we do? We advance, we have advanced mentorship and exchange platforms, such as the network of women. I saw a question there about mentorships. I'm just mentioning this. Network of women, women in cyber mentorship, and many others. We also pleased to co-lead with UNICEF, an initiative called the Generation Equality Technology and Innovation Action Coalition, working with UN Women, the governments of Mexico and France around collective initiatives and investments to support girls' digital access, skills, creativity. So, bottom line, we want to ensure that each and every girl and woman in every country around the world gets a chance to leverage the opportunities offered by access to digital technologies and also that every young girl who wants to, gets a chance to pursue a career in tech, a sector which has many opportunities, not just for personal advancement, but also for our communities and our societies. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Pritam. Now, Michaela, can I ask you, as a member of the FWEO, Young Engineers Group and a Practising Engineer, what are some pathways that you've seen for involving young engineers in sustainability and policy spaces? Thanks. I think this is a really good question. So, there are actually quite a lot of pathways already existing at different scales, but firstly, they're not necessarily publicised and secondly, they're not necessarily fully inclusive of young engineers. So, I think we probably all see that sustainability is moving towards the forefront of conversation at the moment in the engineering industry. And young engineers, especially, are pushing for this and have a lot of good ideas. I think if every organisation started involving young engineers in organisations, so sustainability strategy, then that would be a really good way of bringing together those diverse teams that Emma mentioned earlier. Because I think that is key to bring that creativity and to solve problems for the future. On the other side of the question, you also asked about policy spaces. So, there are a few platforms for young engineers to gain the skills in public consultation and policy making. For example, the youth summits like the Y7, Y20 and Youth for Climate. But again, there are obviously drawbacks to these. I think a lot of people have found that often young people are creating these policies and sharing them with officials but often receiving no response. And I think conversations need to go both ways and there needs to be that constructive conversation that comes following receipt of the policy proposals and kind of using that as a way to springboard into wider discussions around the sustainability and policy making. So, yeah, I think our working group is trying to help to tackle this by kind of creating a space where young engineers can tackle both climate action and policy on a global scale by engaging very widely with COP26 and COP27 this year. So, yeah, thank you for your question. Thank you so much. And yeah, as we, as you were saying with that around the kind of youth summits and that engagement, we kind of now want to consider, transition to consider how collaboration can be increased to foster that multi-stakeholder collaboration. Now, can I ask Prokit in response to this and also Pritam, from your perspectives and experiences as active members of multilateral organizations, we're interested in gathering perspectives on the role of your organization's play in fostering multi-stakeholder engagement and collaboration and prepare the future engineering workforce. So, Prokit, since the WFEO, as an organization brings together national engineering institutions from some 100 destinations and represents more than 30 million engineers, how is the WFEO fostering cooperation and what role is the Young Engineers Committee playing in creating opportunities for young professions? Great question, Jonathan. Thank you for the question. I think the biggest thing that I mentioned earlier was that with regards to cooperation is our committee itself created a space for engineering organizations that may have been disconnected in the past or weren't even aware that there were other ones out there like them interested in sustainability development to kind of create a space for them to communicate and to college share. So I think that was one of the main things that we started off with. I think as far as creating opportunities for young professionals, our committee allows us to be in events like this, to be at events like COP26 where our members were able to directly engage with public policy makers. A lot of times in our meetings, we have discussions on how we can make change, what can we do, but the committee itself allowed us to be able to directly engage with public policy makers in person, hand them our declaration, kind of give the voice to all the youth out there, young engineers who are working in this space and just younger generations who are going to be impacted, who feel a certain type of way about climate change and want to have a voice in climate action. So I think our committee played a huge role in kind of creating an opportunity for young professionals to get involved. I think it was, my biggest takeaway from that was that as someone who is an early career engineer who may not know where I want to be, how I fit into that space, I'm able to spend some time and volunteer and I don't have to wait for anybody. I don't have to wait for my boss to give me a task. I don't have to ask for permission. I can go out and seek a committee like ours to make a difference, to make an impact, to voice my opinions and voice my fears and concerns quite honestly. So I think our committee is quite uniquely positioned to bring together engineers from around the world with different backgrounds, different experiences and kind of work towards a similar goal, which I think we all kind of feel. And I think there's a critical mass of the youth who want to engage in climate action. So I think our organization, our committee is a great place for that. I'm sure there's other organizations that people can be involved with and I would ask people to go out and seek those and see how you can make a difference and get involved. Thank you. Thank you so much, Prokit. And on that topic of kind of organizations that are working together free time, as ITU is the UN's oldest agency and a neutral party platform, how has it fostered cooperation with diverse stakeholders from the private sector, civil society and public institutions to support sustainability efforts? Thanks for the question, Jonathan, again. Within the UN system, ITU is sort of unique, which is sort of cool, I think. Because along with the 193 member states as members, of course, we also have as part of our membership, and this has been since probably our inception, the private sector. So right now, membership includes tech giants such as Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba, all the big guys, as well as civil society organizations, research centers, academic members from some of the top universities across the world. There are 900 members who are not, other than just the 193 countries. And these are actually the ones that lead all the work on ITU's technical standards, bringing the discussions on new and emerging technologies and also on practically every initiative that we have. It includes the private sector, the different stakeholders, civil society. Just as an example, ITU's Child Online Protection Initiative, which was launched in 2008. It has ITU, UNICEF, Interpol, civil society organizations such as ACPAD, Child Helpline International, private sector, Microsoft, Disney, many, many others. And essentially, this is true not only at the ITU, but in multi-stakeholder initiatives across the UN. Now, essentially, we realize that multi-stakeholder is the way to go, primarily because these topics are becoming really complex, multifaceted, not just technically but also policy-wise. And we also realize that the expertise is spread among different stakeholder groups. So it's important to involve everyone from different disciplines. If we want these initiatives to have a real impact. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Pritam. I definitely agree that involving everyone from across these disciplines is vital. Now, Brighton, can I ask you, as SDSN is a connection of networks, and those networks cover people across those different disciplines and different backgrounds and has built a very successful collaborative model. What's some takeaways that you can share with us, particularly with regards to how you're levelling these networks to train youth in technical fields? Thanks, Jonathan. I think that's a very important question because over the last five years, what has been our most unique selling point as an organization is creating a platform where young people, irrespective of their interests, can come and find the communities to belong to. So we have young people that are artists, for example. We have young people who are designers. We have young scientists. We have young entrepreneurs. But by virtue of them coming to SDSN youth, they find a place where they belong, a place where they can find people that have got similar interests as them. So creating a platform that creates opportunities for a diverse set of young people who are coming from unique backgrounds is extremely important. But also promoting a space of inclusion because when we speak about specific technical engineering skills, so many young people that are coming from particular and the resource communities and regions might not have the same level of access to such opportunities. So how do you create a platform where they can also come in lane through peer-to-peer connections and identify areas and skills which they need to develop? So we've seen that through creating this global thriving network, which is very engaging. Young people have managed to create good opportunities for alliance and building skills development. But also most importantly, what we've come to learn over the last five years is that ideas and solutions are very ubiquitous. But what's more important is how do you prepare young people to structure, especially the social entrepreneurs, to structure their model so they can become more investor-ready and how do you create democracy in accessing all these landings and opportunities? What we've managed to do and what forms a strong backbone of our work is partnerships. So currently we've partnered with a number of different organizations that have made our work even much easier. We are working with NOVA Impact currently to launch our seed awards, which we're giving to young entrepreneurs. We've partnered with the Bantamoon Center where we are working towards education for sustainable development. We have partnered with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican where we organize the annual Vatican Missing Proposal. So I think partnership becomes important because you can turn young people to other programs and initiatives being run by partner organizations. And I think prioritizing alliance building and collaboration becomes a very strong piece of the proposal, especially for organizations within the community and children. Thank you so much, Brayton. And as you were saying about the learning that we've got, I now want to ask Carolina to bring us through questions around the future of achieving these opportunities for young engineers and also any live Q&A that we have time for. Thank you, Jonathan. Yes, as we are closing, we want to start thinking what can happen next and where opportunities for growth. So I would like to first address Emma and see if you could speak of what would you like to be happening in the future and also what are opportunities for growth for young engineers to align their work to the STGs. Thank you. So something I've been talking to students a lot about is that they're really interested in knowing how much agency they'll have in different engineering jobs. So knowing beforehand how much agency they'll have engineering firms can often be implementing projects that really don't align with the STGs or work against them and students want input into not doing those projects or changing those projects in some way. Some students go into more specialized graduate school like development engineering because they feel or experience that have more traditional engineering jobs, they wouldn't have the agency to not work on a project that they thought was harmful or research how an initiative will impact communities through health, poverty, decent work or clean water and impact the earth through sustainable cities, responsible consumption and production, climate action or aiding life underwater on land. And they want to have power to change aspects of that project for the better. So if they can know for these more traditional jobs how much agency they would have or the different career paths to having that agency, that would be super valuable. And in addition to agencies, students are also interested in how companies are addressing inequalities in their work and how they're staffing and partnering with local employers and organizations. Sorry, I'm in a city right now. Understanding the different organizations' visions for alignment with the SCGs and roles associated with doing this would be really valuable for students. Thank you Emma for that intervention. As you were reflecting on academia I would like now to reflect on workforce development program with young engineers and scientists so I would like to pass on the word to Erin to see if you could talk to where do you see opportunities for girls and how do you see E4C contributing to this space? Thanks, Carolina. Yeah, I think that there are ample opportunities for growth in this space for early engineers and technical professionals hoping to align their work with the SCGs. So besides our fellowship program which is, you know, I've spoken to in depth and also ASMEs I show an idea lab which, you know, provides opportunities to support the development of social innovations and the development of innovators. I think that there's also opportunities for growth through collaborative design challenges aligned with the SCGs. So a few years ago there was the Siemens Design Challenge for example and something else that I just wanted to touch on with this is that something that came out of a project that was sponsored by Autodesk where E4C fellows looked into the future of mechanical and manufacturing engineering and machinists is the potential for microcredentialing which can be used for early career technical professionals to really showcase more easily and quantify their transferable skills to the sustainable development space and so I think that this could be really helpful kind of and creating more opportunities for individuals in the space. Thank you, Irene. Now Brighton seems to touch a little bit upon moving forward with supporting young professionals in the innovation space as the ASN is closely working towards this aim. What are some opportunities for growth that you are seeing and where do you like this to go in the future? One of the most important things that I'm very certain about in my mind is ensuring that even as we discuss creating opportunities and pathways for career advancement for young people we begin to identify who's left behind if we are working towards leaving nobody behind thinking about who are the ones left behind and then working from there is going to promote a lot of inclusion and most importantly ensure that we harness the demographic dividends that we are seeing we are seeing regionally because if we don't empower young people with their right to infest century competencies then I guess we won't be able to attain the sustainable development goals that we are working so passionately towards. So number one is thinking about who are the ones left behind be it in our workplaces, be it in our organizations be it in our communities but also be it in areas where our work focuses and beginning to look at ways through which we can include the ones left behind. Number two is looking at co-creation, collaboration and cooperation. I think those three C's are going to allow us to create change at scale in designing our programs focusing on those three things creating programs that include engineering that include science, technology the arts but also looking at collaborating with other different stakeholders and partners and cooperation and the cooperation in the sense of ensuring that there is more mutual partnerships and there is more mutual benefits across the different organizations that are working together. Also last year I would like to say something along the pathway of linking the best youth-led ideas to opportunities for financing because there are so many great ideas around which young people are leading but we need to go an extra mile in ensuring that we provide pathways for them to access both financing and the right mentorship for them to scale to scale such solutions and ideas and youth is prioritizing such pathways of increasing the amount of financing that is going to youth-led innovations engineering projects from around the 127 countries of our work. Thank you very much for that Brighton I know we are at time but we do want to ask everyone that we will stay for just five more minutes so that my key lane pool kit and Pre-Tem can also reflect briefly on where they would like this to go forward and then we'll have our closing remarks. I'll pass on the word to you Pre-Time where our opportunities for growth are where would you like this sector to go forward. Thanks Carolina. So from where I said I think we are creating abundant opportunities. The SDG as a framework is flexible enough that it offers every organization and the opportunity to align itself with one or more areas that you can trace the impact of your work and thanks to the advocacy effort by the UN through such as the STI forum the VISTAs forum which happens at the end of the month and many others the awareness is there these are open platforms where everyone is welcome can participate actively. Of course I understand that it's sometimes difficult as individuals to engage I've seen that in the chat also. That's where the engineering association such as ASME, ACM, IEEE and many others. You can play a crucial role because these associations have the means and the broader perspective of what's happening and almost all of them I guess are already engaging quite actively with different UN agencies and you should rely on them to guide your young engineers to areas that they can contribute. Thanks Caroline. Thank you Pre-Chem and then finally I've located my Kayla from the WFEO perspective and young engineers what would you like to see happening in the next few years? I can go I guess I guess the biggest area of growth that I see as a young engineer is I think starting off as an early career engineer I don't know if people can relate to this but I had a lot of confidence issues in my skillset I didn't know if what I was bringing to the table would be enough so I think what's really important is kind of a need for exposure and PR if you will for young engineers that they have the ability to have the capability we go through a lot in engineering school to get to where we are so I think creating an environment which encourages and enables young engineers to kind of disrupt the status quo if you will where we don't have to feel less than or that our voice doesn't matter is very important I think empowering young engineers to kind of request projects which maybe align with their interests if it is with SDGs and finding different ways to allow young engineers to voice their ideas to be incorporated into projects personally I've seen incorporation of sustainable utilization of construction materials or recyclable materials thrown out by someone and then it was incorporated and it can actually end up being cost-effective so I think giving space to young engineers to be able to find alignment within their work that aligns also with SDGs is quite important and is a huge opportunity for growth thank you I completely echo what Paul Kit said and I think finding those spaces is particularly important I think having those diverse voices and conversations is really key and I think everyone learns from them it's not just young engineers who gain from that but people who have been working in the industry for years linking onto what you said about confidence as well I think it would be interesting to see more of these soft skills highlighted in university courses and other occupational training so for example negotiation and communication skills because I think that a lot of young engineers do come out with really good ideas from their university courses but don't necessarily know the best way to engage the wider community on it and I think with a bit more opportunity to develop those skills earlier on rather than having them later when you need them already I think that will really lead to a big change in the conversations that we have as engineers I want to thank everyone for all of your interventions and reflecting on how we can move forward and we'd like to pass on the word now to Jennings and for the closing remark we're sorry to the participants that we couldn't get to the Q&A but we'll try to answer your questions via email or when we publish this in our website Thank you so much Carolina for moderating with me and thank you all of our panelists it's been a delight to have you to have you here and hear about the work that your organizations are doing and the work that you're helping to advance to prepare the young engineering workforce for the SDGs it's been excellent to kind of go through that range from considering what the challenges are to what's actually working now how collaboration is being achieved and the visions for the future that you all have that I'm seeing hearing really excellent things around cooperation, collaboration and co-creation around increasing the spread of ideas and really how even different organizations can co-operate and work together to succeed and amplify and achieve the multistep collaboration that we're looking for on behalf of Eva C I'm very proud of what we've been able to achieve over the past decade in terms of bringing together the global community of change agents that are assembled here at this site event and I also just want to highlight that none of this work would be impossible that Eva C does without the support of ASME's leadership the ASME Foundation who are working tirelessly to support the work our amazing partners, expert networks sponsors and the small but mighty team that I'm privileged to be a part of I want to thank again Karen Olin for the remarks as ASME's president-elect that she shared at the beginning thank you to all of you for attending it's been a delight to have you here to have your questions many of which have been answered through the Q&A feature and thank you so much to all of us excellent speakers best wishes for the rest of the STI forum working forward to actually seeing you all there thank you